Floodland

Product Information

People thought that with the second album we were completely Steinman-ised, but it’s untrue. This Corrosion is ridiculous. It’s supposed to be ridiculous. It’s a song about ridiculousness. So I called Steinman and explained that we needed something that sounded like a disco party run by the Borgias. And that’s what we got. In the decades since, Eldritch has given up being Michael Stipe or Ozzy Osbourne; sometimes he doesn’t even seem like he wants to be Andrew Eldritch. He regularly writes and performs new material in concert, some of which his fans hail alongside his best work, but has yet to make another album. (“I’ve got other stuff to do, man,” is how he recently justified the decision. “I’ve been watching a lot of anime.”)

Steinman produced This Corrosion. But he didn’t produce Bat Out Of Hell– Todd Rundgren did. Did you know? With the benefit of 25 years hindsight, listening to Floodland now is to confirm the feelings that it elicited upon its release in November 1987 – this is an album of mass contradictions. The Sisters of Mercy were always a live band – albeit one with mechanised beats courtesy of drum machine Doktor Avalanche – and a damn fine one at that. Swathed in dry ice, this was a band that dug deep into a vast catalogue whilst gleefully playing obscure or wildly surprising cover versions. Abba’s ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ and Dolly Parton’s ‘Jolene’ were all given the Sisters’ gloomy yet thrilling overhauls and garnished with a Martini-dry sense of humour. Set lists would be poured over and analysed by their obsessive fan base and so, much like The Cramps, became one of the most bootlegged bands of the 80s.This Corrosion" was a composition Eldritch had already once recorded (if not released) with his Sisterhood collaborators. Also, the B-side featured "Torch", the last song from the previous line-up. Then-manager Boyd Steemson maintains the chart success was no surprise for the band. Peddie, Ian (2006). The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest. Ashgate. ISBN 9780754651147. It also took me a while to realise that the Sisters of Mercy are basically Andrew Eldritch and whoever he wanted to work with at the time. The only other consistent "band member" is the aforementioned drum machine, Doktor Avalanche. Eldritch does a great job of gathering the right people to get the sound he wants, even if the "people" are sometimes drum machines and sequencers. In the Wikipedia entry from the album, bassist Tony James is quoted as saying it took about "20 minutes" to record his bass parts. I only previously knew Tony James from Generation X and 80s oddities Sigue Sigue Sputnik, so that seems to fit. Look, I love my cats but I don’t take them for walkies so that other people can look at them. Personally, if I were George Lucas I wouldn’t have released the last three Star Wars films. And the world would have thanked me for not showing them to anybody. I’m not suggesting my work is in that league of awfulness, but you get my point. There’s a difference between being a musician and being a pop star. I think that answers your question about how I would define creativity.

Did this record deserve the scorn and derision it received at the time? Nope. But as metal was such a hot commodity then it was unfortunately grouped in with the meatheads who dominated the airwaves with their teased hair and saucy eyeliner. Debates carry on as to the true meanings of the lyrics on this one, god knows there’s little else left to discuss." ( Smells Like Infinite Sadness) Because Sisters of Mercy have only made three albums—“three very good albums,” Eldritch interrupted a journalist to specify—there is a lot of weight on each one. I’d pinpoint Floodland as their greatest, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. In fact many feared the story had ended when the band disassembled years before its release. Guitarist Gary Marx left to form Ghost Dance; Wayne Hussey and bassist Craig Adams formed the Mission. Eldritch now stood alone (or alone with the drum machine, which he named Doktor Avalanche). In the UK press especially, the breakup was documented with a venom that painted their work firmly in the past tense. “We’d done what we wanted to achieve,” Hussey said. “In doing that we’d lost the original essence of it…. We’d lost the joke of it. Because that’s what it was originally meant to be. A joke.”

PUNK NOT JUNK

Though there are antecedents to the, predominantly 80s, goth music movement, such as Nico, The Doors, and Leonard Cohen, the movement essentially began as a development out of the post-punk scene in the late 70s through acts such Siouxsie and the Banshees with their 1978 album The Scream, and Joy Division with their 1979 album Unknown Pleasures, then in 1980 The Psychedelic Furs, Bauhaus, and Killing Joke with their albums The Psychedelic Furs, In The Flat Field, and Killing Joke, expanded the field of goth, with The Cure becoming the leading act with their 1982 album Pornography. I wanted somebody to play the bass and I’d seen her with The Gun Club. I was a big fan of that band. Campbell, Michael (2012). Popular Music in America:The Beat Goes On. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0840029768. Yes. Although in the current climate, I don’t think that would have made much difference financially. You can’t make money putting out records. As a statement about the music industry, SSV is reminiscent of the famous 1994 stunt by the K Foundation, when they claimed to have burned a million pounds.

In recent years the "Digital Doktor" has been moved to a custom-built laptop designed by Eldritch and constructed by an English military software and hardware company. For a time there was some division in the band whether or not the Doktor should be moved to a Mac running Logic or remain as is. [31]Iain Macaulay: 'Oh god, no!' was the thought that went through my head when I saw the notification for this weeks album. Of all the Sisters material, why Vision Thing? Noooo!!!